You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World

#40
Title: You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World
Author: Gayle Forman
Publisher: Rodale
Year: 2005
Genre: Travel narrative
325 pages

Socioeconomically, this travelogue is about midway between Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World. It's interesting enough as a travel narrative, though as when I read Mayes, I become more interested in how the authors financed their trips than in the trips themselves. The lack of discussion about money becomes an elephant in the room and intrudes on my engagement with the narrative. Forman foregrounds her marital tensions and interweaves them with her travelogues, but then drops the topic without a clear account of how those tensions were resolved. This is not only not well integrated but actively distracting. Did someone have an affair? A drinking problem? What is unsaid, and why was it included in the first place?

Forman does interesting things as a traveler. I admire her without wanting to spend time with her.